Reliving
by Ephram dude
Summary: Ephram's recounting of painful memories of the past when the strains of life drive him to an extreme. rated PG-13 for suicide/attempted suicide and foul language.


This is odd, and I just need to write it down, just to get it out. I'll probably delete this when I'm finished, but for now, I need to get this out.  
  
Twenty minutes ago, I was standing in the bathroom holding a razor blade to my wrist, looking at my pale face in the mirror. I'd taken one of my safety razors and smashed it against the edge of the bath tub with a bottle of shampoo to break the blades off, in the fit of rage I'd worked myself into over life, and all the bullshit that comes with it. Then I picked up the blade. It was sharper than I expected. I cut my finger, but I didn't care at the time. now I'm pissed off, because it hurts to type, and it'll be killer to play piano.  
  
I turned and faced the mirror and stopped, my rage was somewhat dissipated now, not as prominent or concentrated as it had been just moments before. I stared at myself in the mirror. Dark hair, alabaster skin (some people just can't tan. I'm one of them.) and my sunken eyes. I'd always hated my eyes. they were so .. Uncertain. Kind of blue. Kind of green. Kind of grey. Its like my genes couldn't pick a damned colour.  
  
And as I stared into my eyes, working myself up into another fit of hatred over their colour, I remembered the last time I had done something like this..  
  
It was a year ago, almost, so long now, but the memory is still so fresh that just thinking about it causes my stomach to tie in knots and my heart to twist and convulse, to the point that I feel like I'm going throw up and I need to brace myself against whatever's near to avoid falling.  
  
It was just after my mother died. My knee jerk reaction that I was entirely responsible hadn't gone away yet, and I was sunken, sullen and miserable. I'd walked through the week that had passed in a daze. Numb and cold, not feeling, not thinking, not hearing or reacting. It was like I was on personal auto pilot, going through the motions of normalcy as my friends rallied around me and tried to comfort me, the whole while knowing that the only person who could make me feel better was lying in a coffin under six feet of dirt.  
  
It was a Friday. I remember that, because my friends had all tried to get me to go out with them, but I'd thrown whatever excuse had came easiest to me at them to avoid it. I told them that I was tired, I told them I wasn't feeling well. I told them that I was busy. I think I even told Tracy that my dad wouldn't let me go. All lies. I was tired, but not any more so than usual. I wasn't feeling well, but then, I never was. I wasn't busy. What could I be doing? And my dad wouldn't have noticed me leaving if I stood in front of him and stuck a pen into my eye on my way out.  
  
I was lying on my bed, numbly staring at the ceiling, distantly wishing that I had some music as a distraction, but too emotionally exhausted to roll over and put a CD on. My thoughts were wandering like some insane drifter who aimlessly travels the country, causing trouble wherever he stops for any measure of time. I felt guilt, sadness, anger and hatred for myself and everyone I knew all in the same instant.  
  
Then, suddenly, like being hit by a car I knew the way out. It was so simple, I actually smiled a tiny bit. I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, barely noticing that, as my left foot landed on a razor- tipped pencil that I had sharpened earlier in preperation to write.. something to get my emotions out. That pencil, which created a bloody wound on the sole of my foot, which had scared me even to this day probably saved my life.  
  
I stood up and walked to the bathroom, and when I looked back on it later, lying in my hospital bed, I realized that I was probably leaving a trail of blood on the carpet.  
  
I slowly made my way to the bathroom, everything around me moving in slow motion, my mind still numb with emotional pain. I walked in and closed the door, locking it behind me out of habit. You can never be too careful around little sisters.  
  
I limped over to the medicine cabinet, more aware of the throbbing pain in my foot now, though I was ignoring it. I swung the mirrored door open at a snail's pace, not wanting the squeal of the rusted hinges to give me away.  
  
Slowly, with a trembling hand I reached up and closed my fingers around the bottle of pills. It was like touching liquid nitrogen. I went cold all over and for a second I just stood there, one hand bracing myself against the bathroom counter, the other gripping the pill bottle with my eyes closed, shaking.  
  
Then I opened my eyes and pulled the pills slowly out of the medicine cabinet before swinging the door closed. I looked at the pills. They were the sleeping pills my dad had prescribed for me a few months ago to help with my insomnia. They didn't do a lot, and if I took enough to actually help me fall asleep, I'd usually get sick. So I hadn't used many, and the bottle was still almost full. Inwardly, I smirked with gratification. In a way, it was like saying 'you killed me, dad. You killed me with the job you love doing so damn much. I hope it was worth it.' and I knew he'd pick up on it, too. I feel guilty, looking back, that I liked the idea of torturing his soul, but at the time, it seemed justified.  
  
I popped the lid off of the pill bottle with one thumb, and watched it flip through the air before falling onto the counter with a small, dull 'thunk'. The sound felt like an enormous crashing boom to my ears, so final that it caused me to hesitate for a moment.  
  
I shifted my eyes from the lid of the pill bottle to the mirror I stood in front of, and I looked at myself in the mirror. I'd been crying, my eyes were red and puffy, and I was paler than usual. Normally I was pretty hideous in appearance, but I honestly looked like a corpse at the time. I wondered absently for a moment what my corpse would look like, given that I appear to be already dead. I brushed the thought aside quickly.  
  
I really do look hideous, I thought to myself. Frighteningly so. I'm short and scrawny, pale and dead looking. I don't know how I ever got a date. I'd always looked at those guys in magazines, and while outwardly seeming to despise their mainstreamness, I inwardly longed to look like that. Muscles rippling everywhere, a sculpted form with tanned skin and bulging biceps. It reminded me of an instance when I was in the eighth grade. John Parker called me a freaky Goth and said that I looked like a dead guy. I went after him like a viscous animal, even though he was huge compared to me. I was hardcore punk at the time, and at one point, I backhanded him across the face so hard that the spikes on the bracelet I was wearing actually ripped into his cheek, leaving jagged gashes down his face. I had found out later that he'd ended up with a hole in his cheek that had never fully healed, and some nasty scars. That was one of my better days.  
  
The sound of a fire engine careening down the street far below snapped me out of my nostalgia, and back to reality. I gazed long and hard at myself, the hatred for the way I was and the way I looked building inside of me, and impulsively, I lifted the bottle to my lips and dumped about half the remaining pills into my mouth. I quickly grabbed the cup next to the sink that was normally used to rinse after brushing teeth, filled it with water and drank it down, swallowing hard. Each pill felt like a bullet as it went down. I gagged a few times, but I forced myself to swallow, tears forming in my eyes. Unable to not finish what I had started, I dumped the remainder of the pills into my mouth and drank those down, too. Each pill another nail in my coffin.  
  
I began feeling woozy almost immediately. I stumbled back and forth, my vision going blurry and my muscles failing me.  
  
My last thought before I fell to the ground, unconscious was "I'll be with you soon, Mom."  
  
I woke up three days later in the hospital. My dad had heard me fall (into the tub, where I gave myself a concussion by whacking my head), had seen the trail of blood from my foot, and had broken down the door. He'd brought me to the hospital where they'd pumped my stomach and 'saved' me. I was livid with him for not letting me go, so I refused to talk to him, respond to him, or even look at him for the duration of my stay. In fact, the only time I did talk was to reassure Delia that I was gonna be okay.  
  
I relived all of that in a blinding flash of events, lasting less than five seconds.  
  
And there I stood, in the bathroom, ready to take a more effective course of action. Dad and Delia were both out. I may hate my Dad, but I did learn some things from his being a doctor, and I knew that I'd bleed out before they got home. I'd die. The Great Doctor Brown wouldn't come riding in on his big white horse and save me this time.  
  
It was then that I realized that while re-living my last attempt, I had begun to cry. There were tears on my face that I didn't remember shedding, my eyes red and puffy. Despite the fact that there was nobody to see, I quickly raised a hand and brushed away the salty liquid, cursing myself for loosing strength.  
  
I took a deep, raspy breath and drew the tiny razor blade back, wanting to be sure I got this right. The last time I was in the hospital after attempting, it was a hell even worse than my depression before my attempt had been, and I had no desire to go through that again.  
  
I was about to slash the veins in my wrists wide open and stain my alabaster skin with crimson when the phone rang.  
  
That's weird, I thought. Who'd leave the cordless phone in the bathroom?  
  
Since the phone was right next to me, and I didn't want to die listening to an annoyingly loud ring, I picked it up, intending to give the person who called the brush-off.  
  
It was Amy.  
  
I'm not going to write down what was said, because I truthfully don't remember most of the conversation. She talked. I talked. She and Colin had been in a fight, it seemed. She needed to talk, so she did. I listened, and gave words of comfort when I could. After a minute, I dropped the tiny razor into the sink. After three minutes, I sat on the edge of the tub to make myself more comfortable.  
  
After ten minutes, I'd forgotten why I was in the bathroom in the first place.  
  
And so here I sit, in my room, wrists unslashed, life untaken. I hope nobody will ever find this, because I don't want anyone to know how close I was, but I need to put it down, set it on paper (or screen, more accurately) in order to move past it.  
  
Amy saved me. She always had. I was falling. She caught me. She always has. It may have seemed to her like I was always picking her up and dusting her off, and it may seem to her like this time was no different. But more often than not, even picking her up and dusting her off and drying her tears are enough to keep me from falling. And this time, she not only gave me strength, she kept me alive. I'm her rock, and she's mine. I cling to her as desperately as she clings to me, because we need eachother. And I hope she'll always need me as much as I need her.  
  
I love her, and I know she doesn't feel the same way. She won't let herself, ever, no matter what's in her heart. It hurts, but I don't care, because Ephram isn't my priority. Amy is. I want to shield her from all the hurt, all the pain in the world. And if I can do that best as her buddy and not her boyfriend, then I want only to be her friend.  
  
Amy may have called for comfort, or companionship, or a shoulder to cry on. But she ended up saving my life. She was my safety net.  
  
I will love her always for that, and for everything she does for me. She is the light to my dark, and the thing that guides my life. She's the air that I breathe, the ground that I stand on, and the shelter I take when the world is cold and hard. She's my everything. And I'll fall even more in love with her for every day I know her. Because every day I know her, she amazes me more and more.  
  
~Fin~ 


End file.
